Apple starts patenting mobile app ideas | Hacker News Reader

Apple starts patenting mobile app ideas

unwiredview.com

123 pointstechvibe68 comments

For years I've said that Apple is by far one of the scariest software companies out there.

The enthusiasm for their products and CEO seems to have a blinding effect on the very same people that would normally be up in arms.

I think it would be an interesting social experiment to outline many of their business practices without mention of the products, company or brand, even possibly an alias, or dummy co. and survey their hardcore base for opinion of the company.

You have to think about it. If Apple were a type of government, what type would they be?

Wait, Ill let you guess.

Socialist Dictatorship. Think about how closed they are as a system... Would you really want a Socialist Dictatorship running your country?

Depends on who is in charge. Not sure if it fits your description, but Singapore is analogous for Apple, and I'd live there.

Not to belabor the analogy, but...

Flash == chewing gum?

This is a pretty flame-y comment. There's not much use in this comparison. It only serves to ignite the Apple fans and detracts from what could be an otherwise great conversation about this particular event.

I don't get how mentioning the political angle of the sentiment expressed in the parent post somehow makes it flamey.

Both platforms and governments represent ways of coordinating the productivity of numerous participants. Although there are differences it seems reasonable to think that lessons learned in one sphere may very well transfer to the other. If you believe that central planning is the most effective method for a platform (both hardware and software) then isn't it reasonable to ask why this wouldn't translate to the wider economy as well?

It's not a useful comparison. Companies aren't run like governments, where democracy is usually held as the ideal. The comment wasn't useful, but it was inflammatory. I don't think the commenter had bad intentions, but I agree with stanleydrew's judgment.

I've actually been wondering a lot lately why isn't democracy held as an ideal for companies? With the amount of power that large corporations have, why do we as a society not hold them to higher standards and require them to be governed more democratically?

Because the nothing would ever be done.

Then why do we run countries that way? If "benevolent dictatorship" is good enough for giant multinationals, why isn't it good enough for nations? If it isn't good enough for nations, why is it good enough for multinationals that have as much or more power than many nations?

They often are. In many large companies shareholders elect board members, and delegate their voting power to them. They effectively run the company democratically. Even though they don't actually manage the day to day affairs of the company, the C-level officials who do can be fired by the board so it's not totally unlike a parliamentary system.

What type of company wouldn't be classified as a socialist dictatorship in your analogy? Government and business are two entirely different things. (another good reason to be skeptical of politicians who run on their experience as a CEO)

As bad as this seems, the best thing you can do as an aspiring developer is ignore it completely, and do whatever you're going to do anyway.

The only way these patents are going to matter to you is if you hit it big enough to be worth taking to court -- it's a millionaire problem. Even then, there are lots of steps between "patent granted" and "patent successfully defended in court". You're so far from that point that it's not even worth thinking about this kind of crap.

Also, before you bust out your pitchforks and torches, put your logic hat on for a second: this doesn't make any sense as an offensive move. The patent system is broken and everybody knows it. And as a result, any responsible tech company with sufficient resources must play the same game of mutual self-destruction. Meanwhile, Apple has a vested interest in cultivating a developer community. Patent trolls could easily kill that community. If Apple didn't patent ideas like this, some patent troll in Texas would, and the situation would be much worse for small developers.

Obviously, I don't know if Apple is being defensive or offensive here, but it's pretty difficult to imagine them going from retail hardware company to professional patent troll. Again, it doesn't make sense as an offensive move.

> The only way these patents are going to matter to you is if you hit it big enough to be worth taking to court -- it's a millionaire problem.

Not really. Big companies can use patents to send a cease-and-desist letter to any small company. You don't need to be big company to be afraid of software patents.

There have been quite a few examples of patent trolls taking exactly the opposite approach. They know they can't win a court battle against Microsoft, so they do a distributed shake down for a smaller amount on all the small vendors infringing on the patent.

Small companies can't afford to fight the big ones, so they tend to either back down or fight and go bankrupt before the case is concluded.

Apple has done this in the past -- one example is IIRC NuTech, assuming that I remember the company's name correctly. (They duplicated the mac.)

PIXAR did it also with their patent on Catmull-Clark subdivision surface algorithms.

I think Apple has been forced to patent everything they can: Nokia sued Apple for e.g. "using positioning data in applications". If Apple did not create a huge portfolio of patents, then Apple would very vulnerable from attacks from Nokia et.al.

Patents are the business equivalent of the cold wars nuclear weapon: we have peace because if you bomb us, then we will make sure that you are completely bombed too: The thought was to keep peace by having lots of weapons and mutually behaving like no weapons existed at all. In the end, it was all just wasted money.

http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?n...

To be fair, Nokia sued Apple because Apple refused to license their multi-touch tech to Nokia, knowing that they were themselves using many Nokia patents (according to Nokia).

Apple's patents aren't merely defensive. The recent suit against HTC comes to mind.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190590/apple_sues_htc.html

>The only way these patents are going to matter to you is

...if you want financing.

The investment community keeps a close eye on patents, because it's a major potential liability.

>Obviously, I don't know if Apple is being defensive or offensive here, but it's pretty difficult to imagine them going from retail hardware company to professional patent troll

It's easy to imagine. Microsoft went through exactly the same metamorphosis. Originally their patents were "defensive" (which is a spurious to start with -- simply documenting making an idea public is just as much of a defense), but as the growth curve started to peak they started looking at that portfolio as a way to assure their continued success, if by less productive means.

> which is a spurious to start with -- simply documenting making an idea public is just as much of a defense

The idea behind defensive patents isn't that they defend your use of that idea, but that they defend you from competitors who have patents that might affect you. (Since they hopefully allow you to countersue.)

I thought the "defensive patent" idea was less about "this idea is safe for me to use" and more about Mutually Assured Destruction (which doesn't work against Non Practicing Entities such as your typical patent troll, of course).

"...if you want financing."

Not really. Patent litigation tends to come out of nowhere. Investors don't know about applicable patents unless the patents are particularly high-profile (like certain video compression patents) -- in which case, they're probably known to everyone in advance, and part of the business plan.

I'd wager that most internet startups are violating at least one software patent, but that doesn't stop investment in the slightest. And while you could argue that these patents by Apple poison the well for future iPhone app developers, these particular patents are all extremely similar to popular iPhone apps. If you tried to pitch these ideas to an investor, you'd get laughed out of the room for other reasons.

pg puts forth a similar view in his essay on software patents:

http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

But I don't think that logic applies here. Sure, if you're a small operation going head to head with some huge corporation, that attitude toward patents makes perfect sense.

But that's not the order of things in scenario; Apple doesn't see small app developers as their competitors, rather they see Google's Android and possibly Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 (and the manufacturers who build the corresponding devices) as their competitors. So Apple's most likely use for these patents is to threaten developers building apps for Android and other non-iOS platforms. And that, in light of Apple's recent history of patent abuse, gives startups every reason to worry.

While your post gets a lot of facts right, you seem to be giving Apple the role of the good guy a bit too quickly.

Apple has been flooding the mobile phone space with patents ever since they started working on the iPhone and the industry has been suffering from crippling stifling of innovation ever since (in case you were wondering why it took so long for Android to get "pinch to zoom").

As for your other point:

> but it's pretty difficult to imagine them going from retail hardware company to professional patent troll

There is an in-between: they are working on apps that they are not sure they will be able to ship in time, so they are filing these patents to make sure nobody will beat them.

If you have a great app, the only decent way to execute is to ship it and to grab the market. Using patents to stifle competitors or blanket the market with a chilling effect is lame.

One thing that surprises me in the images was that one of them is exactly "Where to?" by tap tap tap:

http://taptaptap.com/#whereto

Wow, it's just blatently ripped off! Wonder what else they got "inspired" by...

Direct links to the images:

taptaptap: http://taptaptap.com/img/screenshot/whereto/1.jpg

the patent: http://www.unwiredview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Apple-... (upper right "mockup")

This can only mean one of two things: Either Apple is being extremely hostile and alienating one of their top developers, or they are preparing themselves for an acquisition of taptaptap in the immediate future.

They'd have to pry it from Disney.

I think you're mistaking tap tap tap and Tapulous, no?

Tapulous is the maker of the Tap Tap Revenge series that was recently bought by Disney. tap tap tap is another very successful iPhone app company but to my knowledge they haven't been bought out. (and with their huge marketing machine, they would let it be known)

After thinking about it and talking with some of my colleagues, I think it would be less of a talent acquisition and more of an IP acquisition. And it would have to be a pretty valuable one at this point, as taptaptap are making some serious cash right now.

That should not be that hard. Steve Jobs is the single largest shareholder of Disney and on Disney's board.

maybe they are trying to protect the app, so that folks on other platforms (cough-google-cough) don't rip it off?

The goal of Section 3.3.1, pursued through patents.

If a patent is filed by someone other than the inventor then it is void. They would have to put the taptaptap people on the patent.

That's a cropped image. The actual patent image is here: http://aiw1.uspto.gov:80/.DImg?Docid=20100190510&PageNum... (Open it in something that supports TIFF if your browser doesn't display it. Photoshop worked for me.)

In the un-cropped version you can see that the image is labeled #602. Here's the only part of the patent body where 602 is referenced:

  For example, an interface such as interface 602 can be provided on
  a user's electronic device. Through interface 602, a user can
  search for and view information on the  various airport services
  available in the airport.

It might not have been proper for Apple to copy another company's work for illustration in their patent, but the copied UI is for illustration of one possible UI for the described app. IANAL, but it doesn't read to me like they're trying to claim invention of the UI.

I work for a major online retailer, and their mobile shopping patent application appears to have lifted screens from our mobile shopping app. I've forwarded this story to our head of merchandising to see if we will submit our prior art on this...

While I'm certainly not a fan of this like most commenters here, am I the only one that is of the opinion that instead of hating Apple, we should hate the broken US Patent system?

While it disgusts me that they are able to patent these things, they are operating within the current rules of the patent system, and one could argue that if they didn't do so, someone else may come along and patent the same things. The phrase "don't hate the player, hate the game" comes to mind. In fact, they could be running afoul of their duty to their shareholders if they did not make their best effort within the law to protect their intellectual property. They could be altruistic and morally correct as many people here seem to wish they would, but someone else could come along, file the same silly patent, and succeed then bring a suit against Apple for infringement. We should all be sending letters to the USPTO or Congress, not Apple for this atrocity.

Further, it is important to keep in mind that these are patent applications that have been FILED, but are not patents that have been ISSUED. There is a big difference there. I could file an application for a patent on a pencil, but it will not become an issued patent because that's bogus. Likewise for these, they may well get rejected for being unpatentable subject matter.

Too many free passes for Apple in these comments.

This seems like a direct conflict of interest for Apple. Patenting app ideas will only serve to further alienate developers from the platform.

I don't see any good coming from this, and I really hope "generic idea" patents like this start getting shot down by the patent office with regular frequency.

The philosophy with patents these days is that whatever you do (as a part of a big company) that hasn't been done exactly that way before, you submit an invention disclosure on it. In this sense, patents these days are used more like copyrights!

Gary Kildall refused to develop anything like a word processor application for CP/M because, basically, that way leads to evil and corruption. MS, of course, beat him out in the IBM deal and dominated with exactly that recipe.

Everything old is new again.

They recently patented this 3D Modeling using an iphone too: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/29/apple_investig...

The article only looks at it from the 'Apple is evil' perspective. I wonder if Apple are patenting these purely so that others can't and thereby allowing freedom for developers to develop these apps without worrying about patent infringement

Right.

Because Apple never capriciously brings down the hammer on the small guy.

I'm not saying that either way - I was just pointing out the alternative. Until Apple state their intentions we won't know either way will we?

We can extrapolate their intentions based on their history of actions, just like you can with real people or any other corporation / group of people. We can't predict with 100% veracity but we can have an educated expectation.

Still, I'm more saddened by the fact that if Apple didn't do this, patent trolls probably would, so taking a stance here is a matter of picking a lesser evil.

You should probably start by looking at Apple's history, which suggests that the alternative isn't likely.

I'm looking at this from the "ANYONE who tries to patent generic ideas is evil" perspective.

No offense, but that's not a very nuanced or useful way to think about the situation. It's the same line of thinking that makes 16-year-old kids declare that they'll never work for The Man. Idealistic and perhaps admirable, but not very practical.

Opposing any individual player in a game for acting in their own rational best interest is dumb. If a big company with good products didn't act defensively in these situations, they'd be eaten alive by patent trolls who have no such qualms. Until the laws are changed, these kinds of patents are a necessary evil.

A complication with patent trolls is that they're immune to defensive patents: they don't practice, so they can't be countersued or bargained with. I think you probably mean "other companies that develop mobile apps." In this case, especially in the context of the direct copy of the TapTapTap app as shown above, it looks like this means "our own developers."

I think we are getting pretty cavalier with the word evil these days, its not like apple is killing babies here. I'm not saying its right, but evil?

Alternatively they could allow freedom for developers on their own platform whilst aggressively pushing for licencing fees from rival platform providers. Bearing in mind their lawsuits against HTC for the alleged violation of broad and trivial patents I can't see why anyone would expect them to use it purely defensively

What if Apple skips sueing the guys on their own platform but does sue the guys making apps like this for Android? Thats more worrisome to me than the prospect of Apple using them against iPhone developers, which is probably something they would never do.

They probably won't sue ios developers over this, since they can easily block their apps.

That, and in the current business climate, and the way the US patent system works, they pretty much have to do this - it's just good business strategy. If they don't patent it, someone else will, and will go after apple for buckets of cash.

In general, it's just a patent cold-war style arms race between large companies - they all keep huge patent portfolios so they all don't bother suing each other for patent infringement, because they're pretty much guaranteed to be infringing on a bunch of each other's patents - it creates a legal situation that neither party wants to get involved with in the first place.

Given Apple's suits against HTC for using Android, I see no good reason to give them the benefit of the doubt like that.

I don't see these patents up on PeerToPatent.org yet, but if anyone has any data that can invalidate them, keep an eye out for when they do go up and stop the applications in their tracks.

Why do people expect Apple to play by different rules? If they are developing these applications to be released in 8 months they're potentially in a bad spot if someone else patents them 2 months from now. What they choose to do after they are granted the patent is a separate issue. Patent reform in general is yet another issue. It's like complaining that the away team hits a technical free throw in a basketball. That's just how the game is played these days.

Even more worrying is the clear indication that Apple is switching to E-Ink display technology for next-gen devices.

seeing this has pushed me over the edge. i now want to join or start an effort to destroy or at least fix the idiocy that is the current US software patent system. we cannot let this bullshit continue!

What ever happened to Apple taking the lead, standing up, and doing the right thing, damn the consequences? One of the reasons why Apple fans have been so fanatical about Apple products is because they know Apple will do the right thing. Unlike say, Microsoft.

So now Apple is just like any other evil, scheming mega-corp. It's pretty sad actually. Like the day the music died, Apple software has died.

When has Apple ever indulged in idealism? They support a hellhole of a manufacturing plant, they willingly implemented DRM before complaining about it, everything they've made for decades has been disposable and hostile to tinkerers, and now they are starting a dystopian software market that's authoritarian in ways Microsoft never even dared.

Hmm, after you put it that way, you are right of course. I think you just broke my Reality Distortion Field!

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

If this is an analogy to sport and say the sport is baby killing. Then I can hate the game and the player. You have a choice to get involved in the game.

If this as an analogy to drug dealing. I agree that you should not hate the players, as they have no choice.

However, I am allowed to hate the drug lord(s).

> If this is an analogy to sport and say the sport is baby killing. Then I can hate the game and the player. You have a choice to get involved in the game.

My point is that Apple is merely playing by the same rules as everyone else. Getting upset because Apple patents something broad or obvious is just misguided, they're quite honestly doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing as a publicly held company.

Some companies may avoid patents for ethical reasons, but ignoring the problem isn't going to solve anything.

IMO, anyway.

If the patent system was working correctly, it would be protecting inventors. That's not exactly killing babies. And I don't think refusing to obtain patents while other companies can and will use them is a viable option.

Not trying to single you out fredpeters, but this whole thread is out of control. :/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com